Automated Reporting of Trainee Metrics Using Electronic Clinical Systems

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has called for increased emphasis on reporting objective performance measures to trainees and programs. However, reporting of objective measures, including clinical volume, is largely omitted from training programs. OBJECTIVE: To use automated electronic medical systems at a tertiary pediatric care hospital to create a dashboard that reports objective trainee and program metrics, including clinical volume and diagnoses in a pediatrics residency. METHODS: We queried an enterprise data warehouse that aggregates data daily from multiple hospital systems to identify patient encounters during which senior pediatrics residents at Boston Children's Hospital had entered documentation over a 9-month period. From this query, we created a filterable dashboard to display clinical volume and diagnosis data by individual resident and in aggregate. RESULTS: A total of 44 of 45 senior residents (98%) in the program were included in analysis. We identified 12 198 patient encounters during which a senior pediatrics resident had entered documentation; these included a median of 332 inpatient encounters per resident, 122 emergency department encounters, and 84 outpatient encounters. The most common diagnoses stratified by clinical site were: inpatient - dehydration (median = 61); emergency department - long-term/current drug therapy (median = 16); and outpatient - encounter for immunization (median = 48). CONCLUSIONS: We used electronic health record systems to generate performance dashboards for trainees in a pediatrics residency across different sites of care with reported volume by diagnosis. Our dashboards provide feedback to program leadership regarding individual and aggregate trainee experience and allow individual trainees to compare their clinical exposure to peers.